Saturday, May 11, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Ecology Movement Re-Emerges as Political Actor in Bashkortostan

Paul
Goble

Staunton, May 11 – The environmental
protection movement, which played a great role in the rise of broader
nationalist movements in the final years of the Soviet Union, has re-emerged in
Bashkortostan, where its activists are now involved in a far more complicated
political game.

Like other ethnic communities in the
USSR, the Bashkirs were able to talk about their distinct national interests by
getting involved in the superficially non-political effort to protect their
territory from the impact of rapid and uncontrolled industrialization with its
resulting pollution.

But unlike many of them, the
Bashkortostan effort has been studied in some detail. (For a survey of its
history, see R.R. Shilimova, “The Ecological Movement as an Institution of
Civicl Society in the Regions of Contemporary Russia (on the example of the
Republic of Bashkortostan,” (in Russian), a thesis, Ufa, 2012).

The stage for this was set by the
appointment of Rustem Khamitov as head of the republic, an official who earlier
rose to power in the early 1990s because of his involvement with the
environmentalists and who in 1990-1993 chaired the ecology committee of the
Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Bashkortostan.

But
the immediate causes weregrowing
concerns about the development of the sacred Toratau mountains, increasing
pollution in Ufa, and problems with waste at factories there and in
Salavat.The ecologists resumed their
meeting and organized large demonstrations which attracted numerous local
political figures.

Khamitov attempted to keep these
demonstrations from leading to confrontation between the population and the
industrialists by holding a series of meetings between the two groups for “dialogue.”
Moreover, he sought to position himself in the middle, promising that Toratau
would not be developed but suggesting that the republic needed the jobs the
other firms were offering.

According to a local writer, A.
Khaybullin, “in reality, the increasing activity of the ecological theme in
Bashkortostan has a deeper cause and is not directly connected with the actions
of President R. Khamitov, as his opponents routinely try to suggest.” Instead,
it involves the collapse of the closed system of politics there that had
existed under his predecessor.

What has emerged is the result,
Khaybullin argues, “of an imbalance of rights between the subjects of the
federation and the center,” where Moscow again as in Soviet times pushes
developmental policies with little or no regard for their impact on the
population in particular regions.

Consequently, as during Gorbachev’s
perestroika, environmental issues are part of “the conflict” between the center
and the regions and therefore “automatically acquire a social-political
coloration.” Khamitov is caught between Moscow and his own people and
constantly has to tack between them.

That is all the more so, Khaybullin continues,
because “the political opponents of the president use ecological conflicts”
against him, and so, “the ecological problem has again acquired an important place
in social consciousness.” Its politicization thus makes it far more significant
than a quick glance might suggest.